Re: SWT and AWT

[Thomas Fitzsimmons <fitzsim at redhat dot com>]

On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 13:43, Stanley Brown wrote:
> > Anyway, I have to agree here - SWT is ok, and I use my stuff so I can
> >
> >program with Swing and get native widgets with GCJ, but libgcj really 
> >needs its own implementations of these things due to the licencing of SWT.
> >
> >Bob
> >
> >  
> >
> I had to go do some reading on the CPL.  Actually GCJ could include SWT 
> and still stay under GPL as long as the CPL parts are in binary format 
> (jar files, shared libs, etc) according to section 3 of the CPL version 
> 1.0.  Now, if SwingWT was under GPL it could be used to replace the 
> existing AWT and Swing classes in GCJ and thus give GCJ multiplatform 
> AWT and Swing and remain under GPL. 
> 
> Now I could have just missed something in the license.  Has anyone seen 
> anything that prevents this?
> 

I don't think including binary-only modules in CVS to get around
licensing restrictions would be a very popular decision :-)

Licensing issues aside, I don't think using SWT to implement the native
parts of the AWT is a good idea *at this point*, for several reasons. 
First, SWT doesn't expose enough functionality to properly implement the
AWT, so native-code workarounds would still be required. Second, unlike
GTK, SWT is not a widely-deployed, stable library -- in fact, I don't
think SWT is even distributed separately from eclipse yet.  Third, SWT
is an extra layer and so would introduce some performance overhead. 
Fourth, SWT doesn't work on 64-bit systems.  Fifth, GTK peers already
exist and are semi-working.

Long-term, after all the licensing issues are resolved, SWT may be a
better choice for the peers, although my first point above will likely
still apply.  Personally, I'd like to see the Win32 port of GTK mature
and form the basis of our AWT there, and I'd like to see all the people
who were going to work on the SWT peers work on the GTK peers and make
them the greatest peers in the world! :-)

Tom